


Echoes of the Past

by ginkitty



Category: Gintama
Genre: Additional Tags to Be Added, Angst, Canon Divergence, Joui War, M/M, Minor Character Death, Sexual Content, mature themes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-01 11:16:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13293687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginkitty/pseuds/ginkitty
Summary: Zura disappears amidst the Joui War.





	Echoes of the Past

**Author's Note:**

> I'm diving into new fic territory and tried some good old angst this time. I left some things untagged to not spoil the plot, so there might be surprises ahead.
> 
> Also, this fic contains massive spoilers for the Shogun Assassination Arc, so if haven't read/watched that one yet, read the fic at your own discretion.

After a particularly hard battle, Gintoki was on the way back to their tent. The sky was already changing to a lighter shade of dusty blue; a new day was mercilessly coming for them, giving Gintoki only a few hours to rest and recover.

Even on the campsite, the air was filled with ash and dust, a lingering smell of blood, defeat, and fire everywhere. They won this battle, but the costs were high; too many men were dead, dying or injured. Gintoki’s clothes and armour showed clear traces of the fighting that had been going on for what felt like days or weeks without a break. Amanto blood came in various colours, green, violet, pink and even blue, so Gintoki’s white and grey clothes didn’t show much of their original colours. His arms felt heavy and numb, but at least they were still attached to his body. Unlike the arm of a new recruit, Fujita or Fujimoto or something, which was cut off by a strange Amanto blade today (or was it yesterday?). Somehow Gintoki managed to find him, after the remaining Amanto fled, and carried him back in hopes of getting him treated by the few recruits with medical education that didn’t desert yet. Hence, drying crimson human blood covered his sleeve and shoulder.

Still, the worst part of this war was not the fighting, on the contrary, Gintoki used to like that. The thrill of battle and the rush of adrenaline when he sliced open enemy after enemy. His crimson eyes gleaming with an eerie and dangerous shine, hungry for blood. No wonder his new nickname, Shiroyasha, spread like wildfire among the enemies. A few weeks ago (or was it months? Years? Time had lost its meaning a while ago, and so had their fight; they were undeniably on the losing end, but Shouyou, they had to fight for him, they had to get him back), the sole sight of the Shiroyasha and enemies screaming the name in agony, had some fleeing on the spot, when he came charging at them. At first, it filled him with a weird feeling of pride, but now he felt mocked, like a cursed demon forced to fight futile battle after futile battle, deemed to survive but seeing friends and comrades die a gruesome but quick death on the battlefield, or seeing them die from infected wounds, sweating and feverishly hallucinating in the medical tents.

 

  
There had been times when each of the Joui 4 Heavenly Kings had their own tent, but back then they had hopes to win this war. Now, the tent was cramped with him, Tatsuma, Takasugi, and Zura. Tatsuma had his back turned to him, curled up in a blanket, and Takasugi was sitting upright, bandaging his left arm, barely registering how Gintoki entered their tent. Even the tent smelled of sweat and blood, but Gintoki didn’t care. Sweat, blood, and ash were the only smells left in his world, and they carried him into a light sleep with dreams full of death.

He woke up thanks to Takasugi shoving his boot up his butt. “Get out of this tent and wash yourself. You smell like a dying cow,” he snarled.

“At least I don’t look like one,” a tired reply came from the dirty mop that is Gintoki’s hair as his face was buried in the single pillow left in their tent. It smelled of mold and sweat.

Before Takasugi could come charging at him, Tatsuma held him back, his roaring laughter waking up the remaining sleepers on the campsite.

“Where’s Zura,” Gintoki asked while slowly sitting up, eyes searching the tent for a certain wig. A grin formed on his face at the sight of Tatsuma’s hands wrapped around Takasugi’s upper arms.

“He didn’t come back last night. Probably pulled an all-nighter to help out with the injured,” Tatsuma replied in between Takasugi’s angry protests to let him go, and a teach a certain stinky perm-head a lesson.

Gintoki sighed and got up made his way outside of their tent, yawning and scratching his stomach with the low morning sun shining right in his face, “Did you already get food?”

“Not for rotten, stinky- “

“There should be two bowls of rice right next to ya.”

Gintoki grabbed one of them but decided to eat after washing off at least a little bit of dirt and blood from his hands, Zura would only scold him for dirtying precious food with filthy fingers. In the early days of war, they even had chopsticks, but now Gintoki couldn’t remember when he used them the last time, and he wasn’t sure whether he would still be able to eat with chopsticks either. They also got a bowl of rice each, but buying supplies, food and weapons was getting increasingly difficult. Even Tatsuma’s money and talent to pursue people to support their cause didn’t do much anymore. Gintoki’s gut feeling had never been great but he told himself that they wouldn’t need to hold out much longer and it didn’t matter that they would lose this war. Zura and Takasugi were (annoyingly) lively, it would all turn out alright as soon as they got Shouyou back.

 

As he was walking to a nearby river, he saw people rising from their tents everywhere. He was lucky to only share the small tent with three other people, as he could’ve sworn six or seven people came from one of the tents (however they even fit in there). A half-empty bowl of rice in his now mostly clean hands and dressed in a fresh, simple yukata, Gintoki strolled around the medical tents to find Zura. Instead, he found the only doctor that was still with them. A plump man in his late thirties with thinning grey hair.

“Morning, Yamada, how’s it going?”

“The usual. Infection and fever everywhere.”

“What about Fujita?”

“Dead.”

Gintoki was startled, when he brought Fujita here a few hours ago, the stump hadn’t bled that much.

“The blade was either poisoned or it was new Amanto technology. In any case, I made some of the newer recruits carry him into the nearby woods,” Yamada replied, his face lacking even the faintest hint of emotion, “Let me know when it’s safe to start a fire to burn the dead. There’s a pile in the woods already.”

“Sure, shouldn’t be more than a few days,” Gintoki said while looking around. “Honestly, Yamada, sometimes I wonder whether the reason you’re still with us is that you don’t have a heart anyway.”

The doctor chuckled, “Don’t tell the others.”

“Did Zura leave already?”

“Katsura-san? He didn’t help me out last night, haven’t seen him for two days,” the doctor scratched his head, “He isn’t among the unconscious or hurt, either.”

“Damn obnoxious wig head, always placing others before himself, leaving it to me to carry around his breakfast through this entire camp,” Gintoki ran his hand through his messy hair, “Well, I’ll get going. See you, Yamada.”

 

He left the medical tents behind to ask around elsewhere for Zura, walking from the cooking fires across the campsite back to the river, stopping various people along the way, but everywhere he got the same answer; nobody had seen Zura recently. He gripped the bowl tighter, this was unusual. Zura was hard to find sometimes because he had the urge to help everywhere and do everything he could. Even Zura’s own men couldn’t provide useful answers, and it didn’t help that his faction seemed to have suffered particularly heavy losses. Maybe people just weren’t paying attention, maybe they mistook him for somebody else because he finally got a different wig.

After bringing the half-empty bowl of rice back to their tent and telling Tatsuma and Takasugi that he couldn’t find a certain wig, he caught himself avoiding Takasugi’s glares. Tatsuma offered his help, and so they agreed to meet up in the nearby village where Tatsuma would ask around while Gintoki would head to the temple to ask the monks. Accompanied by the early afternoon sun, Tatsuma’s laughter and a story about that one time a few years ago where he impressed a girl by catching a huge fish and got punched by the same girl when he threw up on said fish because it wouldn’t stop moving in his hands, they went back to the river to snatch a clean yukata for Sakamoto from the laundry boys for their trip back into civilisation.

The sun was already setting when Gintoki climbed down the steps from the temple. The monks couldn’t give him a satisfying answer either, not that Gintoki expected it. Disappearing amidst the war usually wasn’t a good sign. It either meant injury, dissertation or de- no, he refused to think of that. For Zura, the likeliest option was injury which means Gintoki had to search the nearby woods in case Zura took shelter there, but he was working against time and he couldn’t alert too many people to avoid spreading panic among the recruits. If Zura was so heavily injured that he was unable to find his way back to the camp, things were looking grim. He pushed checking yesterday’s battlegrounds out of his mind; it was dangerous going back and the only thing he could hope to find there were enemies, and corpses. But he was probably overthinking things, Zura couldn’t be that badly hurt, he surely just got side-tracked in the woods making his way back to the camp because of some cute animal there. He would come back tomorrow or maybe he was already back by now, helping with the injured, with the food, with the laundry, or planning the next attack.

Lost in thought, he barely registered that he reached his meeting point with Tatsuma in the small village. He didn’t bring any news regarding Zura but instead something, or rather somebody else.

“Ahahaha, Kintoki, it has been so long since we had some _fun_ ,” he gestured towards a short girl with brown hair and freckles and tall, dark-haired one with a serious face.

“How many times do I have to tell you, my name is not Kintoki,” Gintoki replied through gritted teeth, “and I don’t have money.”

He turned around, waving a lazy goodbye but Tatsuma wrapped his arm around Gintoki’s neck, stopping him midway, laughing loudly into Gintoki’s ear, “It’s my treat.”

Not soon after, Gintoki found himself in a brothel room with the dark-haired girl, helping her out of her kimono. He traced his fingers over her pale shoulders, but her skin was too perfect. He looked into her brown eyes, but they were too dark. Her hand brushed his, but her long fingers were too fragile. He took her from behind, urging to run his fingers through the silky black hair, maybe even pull it to whisper words of relief into her ear. Instead he gripped her hips tightly and finished quickly.

 

He sneaked out of the crammed and smelly brothel room, leaving the two girls and Tatsuma behind. Under the faint moonlight, he made his way back to the camp, thinking about only a few years ago when they had snow at Shouka Sonjuku and he threw a snowball right into Takasugi’s face. Takasugi’s revenge followed quickly after, he grabbed Gintoki’s yukata at the collar and threw in a bunch of snow, the coldness spreading along the taller boys back under his high-pitched screams. They ended up wrestling in the snow, and Zura, who tried to stop them, was involuntarily included in the snow-Gintoki-snow-Takasugi-even more snow pile.

Gintoki chuckled, the only things the three _bad boys_ of Shouka Sonjuku gained from this brief fight were fist-sized bumps on their heads, and the flu. If Gintoki wasn't able to remember it that well, he would be sure that it was from a lifetime ago. Back then, Zura was feverishly sweating, positioned between Gintoki and Takasugi, and now the damn wig head hopefully found his way back to their tent, ideally not feverish. He could already hear him nagging that he and Sakamoto spent time (and money) in the village again. The thought of having Zura’s hair in his face again wasn’t something he particularly looked forward to and the tent would be terribly crowded again, yet he felt at peace.

“Did ya like the girl that much, ya seem so relaxed suddenly.”

Gintoki stopped and looked over his shoulder to see Tatsuma catching up with his pace, “For somebody that loud, you can be surprisingly sneaky.”

“Ya like them with dark, long hair and your height, so I searched for a girl like that.” They slowly continued walking.  
“Don’t bother, it’s enough when she has a pretty face and is willing to spread her legs,” Gintoki flipped a booger at a nearby tree.

“Still, when ya had the choice, ya always picked somebody fitting that type, reminds me a little of-”

“You were supposed to look for Zura, not a lay,” Gintoki interrupted with a mix of aggressiveness and annoyance in his voice he couldn’t quite conceal.

“No luck on that end, so I wanted ta give ya the chance to blow off some steam,” Tatsuma’s head was tilted upwards, looking at the clear night sky, “and I’m sure Zura is already back and was simply delayed.”

“Yeah, he probably helped an injured recruit or something,” Gintoki looked up, searching the night sky as well, “Still believing that this war will lead anywhere.”

The sky didn’t tell him anything about Zura whereabouts, but it reminded him how they sneaked away from the campfire after a successful fight, stumbling into Zura’s tent, kissing and touching and pushing off their clothes. It happened once, and then twice and then again, and again. They didn’t always have sex, often Zura just wrapped his arms around Gintoki and ran his fingers through his white curls, or Gintoki buried his face in Zura’s nape. The war left them raw and hurting, physically and mentally, but Zura was there, Zura understood.

They reached the camp in the quiet of the night and when Gintoki pushed aside the opening to their tent, excitement flickering in his stomach like an unruly flame. He searched the dark tent a few times with his eyes, but found only one childhood friend. Curling up as far away from Takasugi and Tatsuma as he could, he fell asleep, his dreams filled with images of injured soldiers and corpses, all of them with long, black hair.

 

A week later, Sakamoto was carried into their camp with a bleeding wrist, feverish and sweating. Takasugi and Gintoki promised revenge, yet Sakamoto’s hand was damaged beyond repair, he wouldn’t be able to pick up a sword again. With him recovering enough for his departure in one of the medical tents, Gintoki and Takasugi were alone in their once so crowded tent. The physical space between them was filled with tense energy and Gintoki was angry at Takasugi for still trying to fight this war, he was angry at Tatsuma for foolishly getting hurt, he was angry at Zura for still not coming back, and most of all he was angry at himself for letting all of this happen. Being close to Takasugi and his snarky and aggressive comments made all of this worse.

One afternoon, Takasugi, being fed up with Gintoki still sneaking away to ask for Zura, wandering off to various villages and searching different forests, dragged Gintoki to the battlefield they had last seen Zura. With the setting sun covering the battlefield in an eerie orange, they searched for hints and remains, sweat glistening on their necks. After a few hours, Takasugi spit on the ground in fury.

“Satisfied, Gintoki? You asked every possible person, and searched every inch,” he snarled, ”It’s time coming to terms with the truth.”

Rage took over when Gintoki grabbed Takasugi by the collar of his jacket. “Is this all you’re willing to do for a friend? Turning around some corpses, digging through some dirt?”

“This is war. What do you think happened to Zura, considering how much time has passed?” Takasugi hissed, his fingers closing around Gintoki’s wrists.  
“Shut up.”  
“He either got captured and tortured and he wouldn’t have told the enemy anything, so he’s most likely de-”

“Shut. Up.”

“Or he got injured. Fatally.”

“Shut up!” Gintoki shouted, roughly pushing Takasugi to the ground, breathing heavily.

Takasugi looked up from the dirty ground, green eyes gleaming with anger. “Push me and curse at me all you want, it will not bring your lover back.”

Gintoki flinched, Takasugi’s words hit him like a punch in the gut, his hands clenching to fists.

“Shut the fuck up,” Gintoki growled, ready to come charging at Takasugi any second. Instead, he kicked a good portion of dirt into Takasugi’s face, storming off, getting away from him and his words.

That night he slept alone in one of the deserted tents, his dreams continued to be filled with corpses, every single one of them with long, black hair; heavily injured, decapitated, tortured. He woke up sweating and screaming, no time to stick his head through the opening of the tent, vomiting right next to his moldy pillow. So, the Shiroyasha got up in the morrow and prepared for battle, and killed enemy after enemy, showing neither mercy nor any signs of fatigue that day. Yet, the war still wasn’t turning around in their favour.

 

The day they realised they lost one third of their recruits, Takasugi gained a black eye. The day Tatsuma left, Gintoki gained a bloody nose. The day a fire broke out and destroyed even more of their tents and supplies, giving away too much to the enemy and forcing them to retreat somewhere else, Gintoki and Takasugi tried to punch out each other’s teeth. A huge recruit forced them apart, and due to a shortage of tends, they slept at different ends of the camp on the ground.

The only hope left for them, was that the war would treat them gently from now on and that they at least would get Shouyou back, a small fragment of their peaceful and gentle childhood.  
But they war wasn’t treating them gently; Gintoki was lifting his sword ready to take Shouyou’s head and his mind was overwhelmed with racing thoughts – the promise he made with Shouyou – his inner voice screaming that Zura was alive, he had to be – how everything, the war, the fighting had been in vain – the feeling of Shouyou’s hand on his head amidst the battlefield – images of Zura’s corpse – Shouyou’s gentle smile – Zura is alive – Shouyou! – ZURA – SHOUYOU!

  
“Thank you,” Shouyou’s voice made his mind go blank, the thoughts fading to mumbled echoes of the past.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you suffered about as much when reading this first chapter as I suffered when writing it. Stay tuned for 2 or 3 more chapters.
> 
> Kudos and comments are much appreciated.


End file.
